


Guardian Not-Angel

by ScripStrel



Series: Michael Mell - Actual Demon [7]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - Demons, Best Friends, Demons, Dreams and Nightmares, Fluff, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Kidfic, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Scooby Doo References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 06:59:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScripStrel/pseuds/ScripStrel
Summary: Shadows dance and heartbeats race as fire burns below, and somehow Jeremy doesn't stop to consider that the real monster might not be under the bed, but instead laying beside him.





	Guardian Not-Angel

The monster under his bed had gnarled claws and dark, beady eyes. Its breath filled the room with smoke and sulfur, boiling red. The beast in the closet sneered at him with dagger-sharp teeth, dripping venom and acid. He curled around himself, bedsheets pulled up under wide eyes that shone with tears. 

He did everything he could not to breathe. Not to move. They watched him from every corner, many-eyed and many-limbed. Their hunger rolled up the walls and crackled flames of hellfire across the ceiling. The beast under the bed rumbled, and he prayed it was snores, knowing it was laughter. 

The damned house was out to get him. The attic creaked with hoof falls, and the basement crawled with shadows. His mother had found a half-finished runic circle behind the rusty water heater, scribbled in stolen sidewalk chalk and smudged with soot. Her resulting shouts resounded through the evening. 

Now, the sun had set. Curling clouds blacked out slivers of starlight, and the moon was shadowed by the vile Earth. It was dark. 

It was dark, the walls were whispering, and the oppressive heat leered at him. 

Fire danced in the pitch-blackness, breathing down his neck. The rumbling under the bed got louder. The dripping fangs seared holes in the carpet and his discarded, mud-spattered sneakers. The boy forced his eyes still wider. 

His hair fluttered against his pillow, blown against the cowlick by hot sulfur. The mattress shifted next to him, laden with a flaming anvil.

It was breathing down his neck. 

He risked a glance to his left.

And he would’ve screamed if there were any breath in his lungs. 

The demon was staring at him, smiling at him, breathing lava against his cheek. 

_“Jeremy,”_ it hissed. He squeaked and it grinned wider. Sharper. Hungrier. 

“G-go away.”

 _“Jeremy, wake up.”_ Its eyes were dark and snakelike, its teeth jagged and gleaming. It reached towards him with a single, curved claw.

“I’m not scared of you.” Except he was. Terror sat in his bones like lead, freezing him in the fire of the monster’s grasp. He was scared, and the devil knew it. 

_“Jeremy,”_ it said again, the word seeping through a shark’s maw and stinging against the boy’s skin. The claw inched nearer, grasping, prying, piercing. 

He screwed his eyes shut, choking down the tears on his tongue and the shriek in his throat as the talon caressed his cheek. 

Someone poked him. 

Twice. 

And again. 

“Jeremy.” Only this time, said without a sneer. Without hunger. Hushed and earnest. He blinked open and breathed a sigh of relief. 

“Michael.”

His friend stared back at him blearily, eyes big and dark without his glasses. “Did you know you talk in your sleep?”

Jeremy blinked. “What?” His scalding terror trickled away. “No I don’t.”

“Yeah you do.”

“I don’t!”

“Uh, _yeah._ You were all ‘go away, I’m not scared of you.’” Michael said, squeaking out a mocking impression of Jeremy’s sleep talk. “What were you dreamin’ about?”

Oh. Right. The demons. Jeremy pulled the blanket back up to his face. “Nothing.”

“You sure?” Michael frowned at him, propping his head up on his elbow. “You sounded scared.”

 _“No,”_ Jeremy insisted, because it he couldn’t just _say_ it. How much of a baby would he look like? He was _seven._ Seven-year-olds don’t believe in monsters under their beds, and they _definitely_ don’t have bad dreams about them. He was a big kid now. 

Besides, if Michael knew just how much of a scaredy cat he was, he might not want to be his friend anymore, and he couldn’t have that. Who would he sit next to during snack time? Who would be his reading buddy? Who would he play Pokémon with at recess? Jeremy didn’t _have_ any other friends, so there was _no way_ he was gonna let Michael know he was a big baby who still had bad dreams. 

Except Michael was looking at him, sleepy and soft in a way that made Jeremy feel like the end of a Disney movie. 

Huh.

Jeremy and Michael had been friends for what felt like forever to Jeremy’s childhood temporal memory. They’d gravitated together during the first few weeks of kindergarten in the way social outcasts always will, and they’d been inseparable ever since. But now, having a staring contest in the middle of the night during their first ever real sleepover, Jeremy was hit with a wave of warmth. It wasn’t like the monster’s feverish heat, no. This was sunshine and apple pie and the tingly re-warming of your nose and fingertips when you come inside from playing in the snow. 

“You’re my best friend,” Jeremy said into the warm silence. He hadn’t really thought about it before. Of course he and Michael were best friends. They had playdates and shared their lunches and sat next to each other and were buddies on every field trip. It was basically a given up until now. 

That was the thing, though. _Now,_ the weight of it settled over Jeremy like the Spider-Man blanket they were huddled under. Michael grinned back at him, the tip of his tongue poking at the gap of his first lost tooth. _Best Friends._ The words flitted around in his head and settled down in his sternum. Michael was his best friend. It had a finality to it now. 

His _best friend_ wouldn’t care that Jeremy still had nightmares, so he told him. A serpentine gaze prickled on the back of his neck as he told Michael about the demons, but he ignored it, focusing on the frown in his friend’s forehead and the concentrated little pout on his lips. 

“Do—,” he said when Jeremy shut up and began to shrink back into the sheets, hellish flames licking at his arms, “d’you think there are actually demons here?” 

Jeremy bit his lip. “I dunno.” 

“That would be so _cool!”_ Michael said, words hissing through his tooth gap. 

“What? No it wouldn’t! Demons are scary!”

Michael blew a raspberry at him. “Nah they’re not. You know what’s really scary?”

“What?”

His face screwed up. “Uhh…” Michael’s eyes darted around the darkness in thought. “The Chupacabra from the Scooby-Doo movie,” he decided. 

Jeremy pushed him. “No way!”

“Yes way!” Michael giggled and shoved him back. 

“It’s purple.”

“Purple’s a scary color!”

“It’s just the museum lady in a robot,” Jeremy said. “Scooby-Doo bad guys are always just grown-ups in stupid costumes. They’re not really _real.”_ Something in the back of Jeremy’s head whispered that monsters under the bed weren’t real either.

“They’re real ‘till Freddy takes their masks off,” Michael said. “They’re plenty scary ‘till you know they can’t hurt you.”

Jeremy thought about that. His nightmares _couldn’t_ hurt him. They could lash their teeth and glare their evil eyes, but they couldn’t hurt him. They couldn’t touch him. When they tried, he woke up next to Michael. 

Michael made him feel safe. 

“’M still scared, though,” Jeremy admitted. The demons were gone now that he’d woken up, but that didn’t mean they weren’t scary. It didn’t mean he hadn’t felt their hellish gazes prickling on the back of his neck or heard the whispers in the walls. 

Michael just looked at him, half-smile pressed into the pillows. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not scared of demons. I’ll fight ‘em off for you.”

Oh. “You don’t have to,” Jeremy said, the soft Disney feeling returning and swelling in his chest. 

Michael poked him in the cheek again. “I wanna. I wanna fight a demon—that sounds awesome!”

His sleepy smile was infectious. “Okay,” Jeremy said with a yawn and a giggle. “You can be my bodyguard or my guardian angel—” No… that didn’t seem right for some reason. “Or, or something.”

Michael stuck out his tongue and blew another raspberry. “Guardian angels are boring. I wanna _punch_ a demon. Angels are too _nice_ to punch anything.”

“I said ‘or something.’” Personally, Jeremy thought Michael was just as nice as any angel, even if the comparison still felt wrong. “You couldn’t punch anyone anyway.”

Pouting, Michael said, “Fine. But I still get to be something cooler than an angel.”

“How ‘bout Scooby-Doo?”

All of Michael’s teeth came out when he smiled. His tongue poked at where the bottom front one used to be, nudging at the empty space in his gums. Even missing a piece, Jeremy thought he had a really nice smile. Not at all like the dripping fanged maw of his bad dreams. No. Michael had the sort of smile good dreams—the ones filled with gumdrops and sugar plums—are made of. 

“Scooby’s _always_ scared,” Michael said.

Jeremy was nodding off, the comfort of Michael’s smile next to him lulling him back to dreamland. “Yeah, but he’s brave. ‘S’more important'n not bein’ scared.”

“You sound like my mom when you say stuff like that.”

There was a monster under his bed. There was one in his closet and another whispering in the walls, but Jeremy just scooted closer to Michael and curled the blanket under his chin. He closed his eyes as Michael smiled gap-toothed at him, looking brave enough to fight off any monsters, rubber masks and Scooby Snacks and all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Jeremy’s mom found the summoning circle that Jer and Michael had started drawing as a joke and freaked out because of the mess, not because of the evil or whatever. I just didn’t know how to readdress it outside of the dream to explain that bit.  
> I always forget how weird kidfics are to write.I feel like it uses a different part of my brain.  
> Anyway, long before Jeremy learns Michael’s secret, his subconscious can tell something’s up and the demonic presence makes its way into his dreams. That was the premise for this. I’m honestly not entirely sure where the Scooby-Doo came from, but I liked it. 
> 
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!


End file.
